Monday on CNN’s “Situation Room,” Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender said she does not have all the answers when asked who would respond to violent crime once her plans to disband the Minneapolis police department was enacted.
Host Wolf Blitzer asked, “The Attorney General Bill Barr just called these calls to defund saying these are dangerous and it will lead to more harm done to these communities. What happens if there is a criminal out there with a gun and starts shooting people. who will respond if there’s no police force?”
Bender said, “Look, it is our top priority to keep every single member of our community safe, and if you look back at the last 150 years of our police department, it is becoming increasingly clear that that model of policing isn’t working. So we need to invite in our whole community — the nine members of the city council that came from every corner of our city to stand together to make this commitment. We don’t have all the answers, and what we committed to was a community process to help reimagine public safety. So yes, we still have a police department in Minneapolis today. I hope it won’t take 150 years to get to that looking forward, that next solution, but we have a lot of wisdom in our community. And we’ve beat safety strategies and an analysis of all of the reasons people call 911 in our city to look at ways we can have an appropriate response, so we’ve laid the groundwork, and in many ways, this will be incremental change over many years.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.